Kemp Mast unable to remove electric cables

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peter623918

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Hi, got a Kemp mast on a westerly Konsort ,i am trying to pull out all the electrical cables/vhf/wind speed etc which currently appear to run through the centre of the mast as i m am tired of them clanking around in there especially at night,and am going to re route them in trunking on the outside of the mast.

However they all seem so tight top and bottom i cant seem to pull any of them either way. They dont appear to go down the special tubes (which prob arnt big enough anyway?) by the sail track.

The halyards etc run inside as well via special wheels top and bottom ,these all run free

Any ideas ....is there a special clamp in side that i dont know about??

The mast is in situ and do not want to take it down if i can help just to do this little problem


Regards

Peter
 
If the wires are coming out on a tight bend then it will be very difficult to pull them through and it may mean getting the mast down so that you can dismantle the headbox and the foot. Having said that, if you are lucky, a bit of washing up liquid may help lubricate them enough to get them out.

You may also try pushing one end in and pulling the other end so that you are effectively just pulling round one bend rather than two. Once one end is free the whole job gets a little easier. But it can be a difficult job with the mast down, yet alone when it is still in situ.

If you've got enough access to give them a straight pull then I have no idea what to suggest.
 
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There has to be some sort of clamp at the top to prevent the cables from hanging on the electrical connections. Ones I have seen are like a split, tapered grommet that can be lifted upwards. It is on the top of the masthead cap, so should be accessible.

The cables in my Kemp mast run up the ducting each side of the mainsail slides. Some thinner cables can tend to come out through the slot, in which case sometimes they are taped together, inconvenient if you need to replace one. It might be worth wrapping thinner cables with a few turns of tape at, say, 1 metre intervals to prevent this from happening.
 
I had a 1972 Kemp mast with a similar problem (eventually resolved using the tie wrap tail method) on that mast a key problem was the rolling furler mechanism which passed through the mast. This created a nice v shaped wedging point for cables inside the mast.
 
peter623918 said:
Hi, got a Kemp mast on a westerly Konsort ,i am trying to pull out all the electrical cables/vhf/wind speed etc which currently appear to run through the centre of the mast as i m am tired of them clanking around in there especially at night,and am going to re route them in trunking on the outside of the mast.
Click to expand...

Are you sure it's the cables causing the clanging and not the halyards? On the Kemp mast on my 1991 Fulmar the cables go up a rectangular trunking on the back of the sail track. I had major problems replacing my damaged VHF cable due to the friction where the cable entered and exited the trunking. I fed the cable from above whilst someone pulled from below, until it jammed at the bottom and eventually the join between the old and new cables parted. I then spent about 3 days laying on the deck with all the pulleys removed fishing around with an old coat hanger until I eventually got hold of the end of the cable. I assume the cables were originally inserted before the end caps were fitted.
David
 
vyv_cox said:
Some thinner cables can tend to come out through the slot.
Click to expand...


I solved this on a mates boat (Westerly Griffon1, original mast) by threading the whole thin wire into a plastic gauze sleeve of a suitable diameter.
The gauze and wire combination easily slipped flat into the mainsail groove an the into to conduit groove, but it stayed in there beacuse of the stiffness of the gauze returning to its circular form.
 
chewi said:
I solved this on a mates boat (Westerly Griffon1, original mast) by threading the whole thin wire into a plastic gauze sleeve of a suitable diameter.
The gauze and wire combination easily slipped flat into the mainsail groove an the into to conduit groove, but it stayed in there beacuse of the stiffness of the gauze returning to its circular form.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by "gauze sleeve"? I've not come across it, but it sounds useful.
 
It is an empty tube made of a plastic mesh, the sort of thing that would shroud an engine loom eg to tidy up independent wires into a bundle.

similar to RS 408-283 Polyester expandable braided sleeve.
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/ search for 408-283

or https://wadsworth.co.uk/products/Polyster_Sleeving_Grey~505BK100REEL

I got enough to go the whole length of the mast, threaded the thin cable into it, then teased the pair into the conduit. The thin wire was a loose fit within it, but the natural diameter of the gauze prevented it falling out of the slot like the wire alone could, and there was room to thread another one in with it if needed.
 
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Graham_Wright said:
I don't understand the rest of it either!
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It's a strange feature of the old Kemp mast extrusion. The mainsail slide cavity is bounded by two roughly triangular cavities that are open on the corners facing the slide. These cavities are used as a conduit for cables to the masthead. The opening is about 5 mm wide, which can be handy for drawing a cable up or down the mast, but narrow cables can fall through the gap. When I bought my boat the masthead instrument and VHF cables were taped together to prevent the latter from falling through but this caused me much extra work when I wanted to replace it.
 
I'm struggling to explain it any better, and the pics on the web are not much good.
Think of a coax cable, take out the core and insulation out and you'd have just a sheath, in copper.

this stuff is like that, but plastic.

Does that help?
 
As RM said, two friction points can easily be halved by poking one end (the top) through.

At the bottom you could slide a bit of bendy plastic tube over the cable and into the hole to reduce friction further. But, the Law of Sod says that when you poke the top end in, the cable will fall and turn itself into a knot.

For that reason, I'd do it the less obvious way. Poke the bottom end through, and pull from the top.

One caveat though.

It has been long-held good advice that cables are liberally coated with summink like Evo-Stik as they are pulled through, with the mast horizontal. Once cured, reeve halyards.

I don't think that we considered the what-ifs thirty years ago.

If that proves to be the case, I can't think of a way to (safely - for the protection of idiots) to remove the masthead fitting with it still standing.
 
I also assisted on another westerly, their mast head cable was open circuit and rattling in the mast, so it had to go.
It emerged from the masthead vertically and could be pushed and pulled a couple of feet before it seized ( certainly morte then the wire stretching).
Eventually I worked out that the cable had been wrapped in foam with a turn of masking tape at intervals of a few feet, so the gathered foam was jamming it. By working a long thin screwdriver around the wire through the hole at the masthead I could hack the foam off and eventually withdraw the wire, but the foam had to be tediously picked out of the hole at the foot using a barb.

All this was done with the mast at about 60 degrees with the head on a balcony and the foot on the ground. There was no conduit to thread the new cable, so it was lead back down using rigging wire as a mouse. I could not remove the foot in time, and the top was welded, so no anti rattle strategy has been applied yet. I might try again next season, but it's not my boat.

Another boat had noisy wiring in an IYE mast, so I removed the foot and put pipe lagging around the wires up to the crosstree as I couldn't get beyond there.
Fortunately that was enough to stop the clanging, probably beacuse of changing the harmonics of the wire.

Yet another I witnessed was one where a former owner had used spray foam, and the new owner had to fabricate a drill to hack it out the length of the mast. that was an awful job.
 
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